the grasshoppers are coming!

This article explains how this year could be a really intensive year for grasshoppers.

In other words, order your chicks now!

A few years ago I had a lot of grasshoppers and I had attempted to make a trap so that I could collect grasshoppers in the summer, let them dry out into grasshopper jerky, then store them in a cool, dry place and then feed them back to the chickens in the winter.  But all of my traps sucked. 

Anybody ever had a successful grasshopper trap (other than a chicken)?

I believe that researchers drag big nets over vegetation, I think you would need to work for a long time to catch many though.

when i worked at the vegetable farm, often i was able to grab and collect in a bag in my back pocket, loads of grasshoppers while weeding the fields. In any situation where there is little food to be had, they are positively worth collecting for eating, if food is in plenty, not so much. Can't imagine how to catch enough to feed chickens.

I have only collected for my own consumtion.Since they jump forward just catch them from in front of them.Pull off their hopper legs since you cant eat those anyway and then they will stay in the container and later pan.Taste a bit like pork.For a larger haul,dig a pit too deep for them to get out of and find a crew to form a large ring.Then slowly work your way together toward
the pit in the center.Results in one big grasshopper feast!

Mt.goat  I must say that you have a very rich & interesting diet.

I know that our cats just loved to eat grass hoppers when I was a kid.

I've not tried them except once as a candy, but I did have crickets.

Do they taste anything like crickets?

Here you go Paul, The Grasshopper Trap by Patrick McManness.

Why can't you eat the legs? are they too spiny? too much un-digestible fiber? or is there an other reason?
Chicken can eat the legs though right?

well how I remember it,is the hind  legs are scratchy and could get caught in your throat.But from a strictly practical standpoint:imagine dumping a container of live grasshoppers onto a pan and they can still jump?You might lose half your hard earned dinner not to mention keeping them in the container.

Mt.goat wrote:
well how I remember it,is the hind  legs are scratchy and could get caught in your throat.But from a strictly practical standpoint:imagine dumping a container of live grasshoppers onto a pan and they can still jump?You might lose half your hard earned dinner not to mention keeping them in the container.

You just have to fit a lid on very quickly.
Oh and you turn the heat on after they are all in the pan!

What if you put them in the freezer for 30min. first & then cook them?? I hear that is what they do with scorpions.

Not the most sustainable, but how about a shop-vac?

That could work! It would be sustainable if it ran on rechargeable batteries powered by a solar charger.

We use the shop vac to catch the flys in th spring in my families log home, they get thousands of them, they hide in the crevices during the cold & come out in the spring. Then we suck them up in the vac, but we don't eat them.

Wife's grandma used to catch them by hand and eat them on the way to school.  Lived to 101, and I'm sure that was a part of it.  When I first met her, she was in her 90's and was eating crickets that had been boiled in shoyu (soy sauce) and sugar.  Quite tasty - crunchy outside, gooey inside.  Proper balance of salty and sweet... mmmmmm!

I wonder what the nutritional value of grass hoppers is??

They are rich in protien and eaten extensively in parts of africa and asia

I really wish I could even entertain the idea of eating a grasshopper. I'm so very proud of you all who do eat them!

They destroyed everything at the farm last year. They even ate the leaves off the fruit trees. They would fly up in waves ahead of me wherever I walked. It was sickening. I'm planning on getting as many guineas as I can manage and just letting them run loose. I'll keep getting new ones all summer long if I have to. I tried spraying kaolin clay on stuff, but it didn't have the dramatic effect I was hoping for.

In Mexico where a lot of people eat grasshoppers/locusts because they need to, their technique is to go out in the fields in the morning before the sun (and temperature) rise, when the little buggers are still sluggish. Apparently much easier to nab that way.

I learned a lot from our first grasshopper invasion this past summer. People tell us it happens every few years....count on it. First, I made a big sweep net, and was able to catch two or three times a day a good double handful which, first drowned in soapy water, made an excellent feast for the chickens. I can see how ducks and guineas, free ranging, could make an impression...but it would take a lot to do any damage at the peak of the attack. I had to bag all the new fruit trees with mesh fabric....they had even started eating bark. I'm with the Fukuoka no-pruning of fruit trees for sure now, unless it's to prune UP! Horticultural tradition here favors strict pruning, including summer pruning, for height control for convenience of picking. Perhaps this is OK in large commercial orchards but not on this homestead! The tallest parts of the new trees are the ones that escaped the worst of both the grasshoppers and the deer! If I have to get out a ladder to pick my apricots, so what, at least I'll have apricots.
Among the vegetables I saw that anything that was downy or better still raspy was more resistant....such as tomatoes and squash. But I was amazed that kale and broccoli which were stripped almost to the stalks grew back quite luxuriously in the fall. The behavior of these grasshoppers is puzzling....once they get started in on a particular plant, they are likely to finish it off if it's unprotected no matter what. Ash dust helped somewhat. One corn stalk in the corner of the patch got munched down almost to the ground and then they moved on and left the rest comparatively unmolested. Go figure. I guess I should call them cooperative insects, and be thankful for the chicken feed.....Now if only I could eat them......

You are supposed to cook em if you are eating a bunch.
Something that can upset your stomach in them that gets neutralized by heat.


we had the red banded ones imported with hay from Utah....Grrrr.

They BITE !

Hello,
Have seen to many parasitic worms come out of grasshoppers, crickets, and roaches to consider any of these as food substitute.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7927-parasites-brainwash-grasshoppers-into-death-dive.html

Boil 'em first, and then they look like crawfish:

http://www.velacreations.com/food/animals/insects/item/99-grasshoppers.html

guineas are excellent grasshopper protection